If Jimmy Butler doesn’t understand the concept of monitored minutes, he’s about to.
Rather than work Butler, 26, to the bone during the regular season, new Chicago Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg is preparing to do something new: cut Butler’s minutes.
From CSNChicago.com’s Vincent Goodwill:
At first it was Luol Deng but now Butler has taken his place as the NBA’s Ironman. Since the start of the 2013-14 season, Butler has averaged nearly 39 minutes per contest in 132 games—a full minute more per game than Carmelo Anthony, next on the list at 37.7 minutes per contest.
But Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg hopes to shave off some minutes for Butler this season, with the thought he won’t be worn down come playoff time, when the tread on the tires begin to show. Of the top 10 players in minutes per game during that stretch, only LeBron James can realistically say he plays both ends of the floor hard, but even he doesn’t play defense as consistently as Butler has been known to do.
We’ll see how that plays out,” Hoiberg said. “I would like to have him play a little less than that (usual), so at the end of the season he’s fresh. You want all your guys, fresh, not only mentally but physically and hopefully we’ll accomplish that.”
To this point, Butler has logged 7,597 regular-season minutes. That doesn’t even rank in the top 500 of minutes totals of fourth-year players in NBA history, but the game has changed. Rest is paramount, even for the younger guns. Besides, Butler would surely rank among the most overused four-year veterans ever if it wasn’t for the fact that then-head coach Tom Thidodeau used him sparingly, if at all, during his rookie campaign.
Not that you should expect Butler’s minutes to plummet under Hoiberg. The Bulls don’t have a ton of depth at the shooting guard position, and they’ll need Butler’s offense more than ever if Derrick Rose misses any time at all. Butler led the league in minutes per game last season, averaging 38.7, and it’s likely he approaches that benchmark in 2015-16—assuming he stays healthy and that the Bulls don’t become the 2014-15 Golden State Warriors, who rarely, if ever, needed to overwork starters because they were winning by so damn much.
This is merely a housekeeping issue, even if it’s subject to change as the season goes on and the wrath of an 82-game schedule possibly forces Hoiberg’s hands. Butler looked utterly exhausted while defending LeBron James in the second round of the 2015 playoffs, and though LeBron can have that effect on people, some extra rest, contrary to what Thibs may have told Butler in the past, isn’t going to hurt.
